Posted
by
chrisd
on Saturday April 27, 2002 @04:09PM
from the nevada-is-americas-holster dept.

In what must be a dream come true for some, Nevada has approved a License Plate commemorating the Test Site and the connections Nevada enjoys with Nuclear weapons in the United States. The Associated Press article on the subject notes that a lot of people are up in arms about the new design, as Nevada is embroiled in controversy over the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility. The license features an atom. a mushroom cloud as the background and the equation E=mc2 on the plate.

I was unable to find a picture of the plate on the web (I saw it in my morning paper). I'm sure a picture must be on the web somewhere. I'll leave it to slashdotters to suggest the best personalized lettering for the plate. My entry: DUKNCVR?

Wow, must be a slow news day on the ole/. But hey I'll bite anyway. I'm not surprised that members of the general public are all up in arms about it. My neighbor across the street works for NASA and he's a scientist working on the idea of nuclear propulsion in space. Their real task now is figuring out how to safely and efficiently get such an enormous reactor into space. Anyway his license plate is an MIT plate (my state has plates for almost any university that has an alumni association that can rustle up however many signatures you need) customized as "SPCNUKE" He's always getting honked at, cut off, sworn at and lectured by the obligatory mother with three kids in the grocery store parking lot. Seems everyone thinks that his project is really about one of two things. 1) How to get nuclear weapons into space. Or 2) Failing that, how to dump all our nuclear waste into outerspace.

I've asked if he's ever considered changing the plate and he said no, he kind of likes the reactions he gets from people. (Lack of attention in grade school, perhaps?)

Hey....I always knew there was something just a little bit 'odd' about those folks...

As I see it, the real problem is that when it comes to something people don't understand that sometimes has the ability to maim or kill them they don't want to take the time to learn more about it. They want it banned, damnit, banned! Out of my children's face!!!

When I see one of these plates crusing down the road I probably won't give it a second look, it's just too bad people can't see the larger issue (or more often, the lack of one) sometimes.

Exactly. If the plate sells, there must be a demand, and the group will get money for it. If not, it'll be yanked. In my state (Ohio), if you don't sell a certain number of custom plates every year it gets yanked.

I certainaly understand that it wasn't exactly the highlight of the state's history, but hey... An earlier poster had a CNN link that said 800 of the 100,000 workers fell ill. I'm not an industry expert, but 0.8% illness/death for an industry seems pretty low. Back when this was all happening, industrial jobs were still pretty dangerous (heck some still are!), and it wasn't *that* uncommon for someone to have to quit on disability or be killed in a given year.

Its amusing that people are opposed to nuclear waste in outer space...after all, the mass of all nuclear waste in the sun is probably greater than the mass of everything on earth. For that matter, the mass of radioactive materials on earth is probably orders of magnitude greater than all the radioactive materials mined/produced/enhanced by human beings.

Only idiots are fundamentally morally opposed to radioactive material or its production. The only rational basis on which to oppose it is safety. Not that this is a trivial basis =)

As I see it, the real problem is that when it comes to something people don't understand that sometimes has the ability to maim or kill them they don't want to take the time to learn more about it. They want it banned, damnit, banned! Out of my children's face!!!

For further proof of this statement you only need to look at firearms control laws.

Your position is flawed. Yes, people often ban things they don't understand, but that doesn't mean they'd be OK with it if they only understood it. I have taken the time to learn more about guns, and the more I learn the more I support firearms control laws.

I have also taken the time to learn more about nuclear waste, and the more I learn the more I oppose nuclear power plants. I think our only real hope is turning the waste into glass, but they refuse to do that because of cost, even though it will be far more expensive to clean up the Columbia river once those tanks at Hanford leak.

I wonder how Nevada could be proud of being the official "most worthless place on the continent" as judged by the government which decided that if some place must be irradiated, it might as well be Nevada, because it's not really much of a loss.

I wonder how Nevada could be proud of being the official "most worthless place on the continent" as judged by the government which decided that if some place must be irradiated, it might as well be Nevada, because it's not really much of a loss.

Nevada relies heavily on tourism. Of course there are the idiots who go to Vegas, and the people who are attracted by Nevada's marriage and prostitution laws. Aside from that, Nevada has a strong appeal as an extremely desolate place- and it's the right kind of desolation, with Indian reservations and weird rocks and nuclear testing grounds. Not flat desolation like you see in the Plains States.

If you're wanting to see the Milky Way, or you're wanting to take some pictures with your new Canon D-30, or you're looking to justify your SUV purchase (and you don't realize that your Ford Explorer is going to need a tow truck), you could do a lot worse than Nevada. Of course, the nearest large population center is the west coast, and California itself has a lot of cool places to visit. Nevada's problem is that it's surrounded by states with similar terrain and features, so it doesn't get the fair share of tourists that it deserves. So they are always looking for things that make them stick out from AZ, CA, UT, etc., like gambling, prostitution, marriage laws, etc. (Utah might have funny marriage laws as well but if it does, they're of a different sort because I never heard of anyone going to Utah just to get married.)

The Manhattan Project sites are great things to have in your state. The bomb test areas themselves might still be radioactive and nasty places, but they have the status of historical sites, which is great for attracting tourists and so you can build tourist traps around them at a safe distance.

Yucca Mountain, on the other hand, is nothing but bad news because it cannot be leveraged to generate tourism at all- it's for waste, which repels tourists. As far as Nevada is concerned, the federal government might as well be dropping a smelly hog farm in the middle of Vegas. So you won't see Yucca Mountain plates anytime soon unless it's part of a political ploy during the next election, when Nevada's 4 electoral votes are up for grabs.

Well perhaps, but that would be New Mexico (Los Alamos, and the Trinity site at White Sands), not Nevada. The original bomb test site (Trinity) is open to tourists one day a year, and is now negligably above background radiation. Somewhere in my collection of stuff I have some of the green, fused sand (melted by the explosion) called trinitite.

Parts of Nevada are quite beautiful. I go to Black Rock City [burningman.com] every year, and enjoy views like this [sulli.org] and this [sulli.org] and this [sulli.org] (the last is Pyramid Lake, about 50 miles south of BRC). Anyone who claims that Nevada is a wasteland is just fucking wrong - it's well worth the visit for the scenery alone.

So you won't see Yucca Mountain plates anytime soon unless it's part of a political ploy during the next election, when Nevada's 4 electoral votes are up for grabs.

Make that 5 electoral votes...there'll be a 3rd congressional district beginning in 2003. (Visit this site [darioslittleproblem.com] to learn who not to vote for if, like me, you're in this new district.)

"+1, interesting" -- as in: now there's an interesting example of historical revisionism.

So Japan was "on the edge of a surrender"? Hardly. And while there may have been a faction that wanted an end to the war, the militarists in control were in no way going to allow a surrender, at least not without a bloody, massive invasion of the home islands that would make Normandy look like a seaside picnic. The nukes brought something enough radically different to the equation that a surrender could be negotiated with less loss of face.

And in a technology-driven World War, there may be civilians, but there are no non-combatants. The "civilian" industrial complex was a key part of the war machine on all sides. As it was, fewer people died in Hiroshima or Nagasaki than in the "conventional" firebombings of various cities earlier in the war.

If you didn't mind sharing the area with lots of venomous creatures, nasty non-venomous creatures, aliens, secret government projects and a handful of radioactive yokels, it wouldn't be a bad place to live if you liked the heat. Front row seats to any nuclear accident that may occur in the area. Tickets go on sale now, call your local Ticketmaster for details.

exactly, they want you to think of it much like a cartoon. That's exactly what the government did for 20 years after the first nuclear weapon was used in WWII. They would give information out to movie makers, authors, etc, but would limit this info to make a push for movies/stories that were centered on horrendous creatures. Attempting to move the public away from the truth that this is a devastating weapon that causes LONG-TERM, horrific damage to REAL fucking people.

Actually the horrendous creature movies of the 50s and early 60s are probably what embedded some of the ridiculous notions about atomic energy in the public's mind.

As for weapons that cause "LONG-TERM, horrific damage" -- one, weapons are supposed to cause damage, and two, dead is about as long term as you can get. If you look at the objective facts, nukes actually have a pretty good record for keeping the peace: they ended one world war, and have deterred any others in the nearly sixty years since -- precisely because they are so horrific.

(It was Alfred Nobel's hope that his invention, dynamite, would make war so horrific that it would never be fought again. Didn't quite work out that way.)

Revisionism. A minority faction wanted to, but the militarists in control would have none of it, and were willing to -- as Churchill put it in a different context -- "fight them (the US) on the beaches,...in the streets," et bloody cetera.

It has maybe deterred one or two, but not all as you claim.

Did you flunk reading comprehension in school? How many world wars have there been since 1945?

You too can request a custom plate design, if you can get 250 Nevadans to promise to buy it:

A number of charitable organizations and causes have proposed special license plates which may or may not actually be issued, depending on public demand for them. These are called "Letter of Intent" plates.
Motorists interested in seeing the plates produced fill out a Letter of Intent stating they would purchase a set. A given type of plate will be produced if the Department receives more than 250 requests for it before the date listed on the form.

Chernobyl wasn't a nuclear explosion, it was primarily a fire fueled by the graphite moderator of the reactor. Quite nasty enough, but after they got the fire out and thousands of cubic yards of concrete dumped on the debris, Chernobyl's remaining reactor (there were two) continued to produce power for many years. But yes, it did litter the countryside with radioactive material.

(Power reactors elsewhere in the world use completely different designs, (non-positive void coefficients, or additional safety mechanisms) and can't catch fire.)

Perhaps not, but safety measures have to be kept in place to be effective. The September 1999 accident in Tokai Japan (Japan's worst ever, though not as bad as Chernobyl) was due to a complete lack of safety mechanisms. To save money, somebody got the bright idea of preparing nuclear fuel by mixing it with nitric acid in a really big open bucket. None of the recommended cooling procedures were in place to make this remotely safe. Of course nuclear fission started in the open acid vat, and did a nice job of irradiating the neighborhood. It took a while to contain it, and there were fatalities. Needless to say, Japan is no longer fond of "safe" nuclear power.

Funny thing is, this plant was filmed by Toho to be the subject of an attack by Godzilla in an upcoming movie. The movie mentioned Chernobyl by name (and the mention was by an actress born in Hiroshima) as Godzilla's attack on Tokai would have a similar effect. After most, if not all, the film was in the can, the accident occured. Three months later, "Godzilla 2000 Millenium" opened in Japan. The next summer it opened in the US as "Godzilla 2000".

Nuclear plants are only as safe as the people who run them. When the people who run them are imbeciles, Godzilla will pay a visit sooner or later. Live and in person!

I propose the skyline-licence-plate. And as a primer, it should come in two kinds. On front of the car it pictures the New York skyline before september 11th, on the back you get the same picture, but without the WTC.

I really like that. I propose that there be two versions - in-state and out-of-state. Those of us who don't live in NY and still want one could get official NY license plates (not valid for placing on a car and driving with, but still produced by NY state).

Nevada has at least 5 or 6 different license plate styles - just like California and various other states. Basically you pay more for one of these "themed" plates and part of the proceeds get donated to the cause. People like the idea bucause your talking about $50-$100 *extra* for a set of these themed plates. If you don't like the idea of the 'Nuclear' plates then get standard plates, or the Tahoe plates, or the Art for Kids plates, or the Firefighter plates or......

Its just another revenue stream for this historical society - if enough geeks in Nevada banded together you could get some moronic "Slashdot.org Society" plates if you wanted. These plates neither support or oppose Nevadas desire to have Nuclear waste in the state. Its JUST a license plate!

Prostitution is only legal in a couple counties in Nevada - even then those counties COMBINED all have a population LESS than 250 people

No. This is not true. While prostitution is legal here on a county by county basis, many counties allow prostitution, including Elko, Wite Pine, and Nye counties. The only places that I know of right off where prostitution is not legal are Las Vegas County, and perhaps Carson County. It may also be illegal in Reno, as there are no brothels in town here, but there are several "bunny ranches" just outside of town. Elko County alone has a population of at least 20,000 (with some 10,000 in Elko alone). In Elko County, there are at least five brothels, three in Elko and two in Wells, 60 miles east of Elko.

Prostitution is only legal in a couple counties in Nevada - even then those counties COMBINED all have a population LESS than 250 people

Just what the hell are yout talking about? I don't know about Storey county, but the [216.239.35.100]census figures for Lyon county show 34501 for this county alone. Although the median family income is only $33k, the economy here is moving ahead pretty well...

License plates don't have to be universally
approved or politically correct to have meaning and relevance. If that were the case, we'd have nothing but boring "beige" plates on all the cars.

Let's see, off the top of my head:

New Hampshire - Live Free or Die. Luckily this resonates strongly
on both sides of the aisle.

District of Colubmia - Taxation without Representation. Makes a point, does so with historical relevance, yet the possibility of a DC vote in congress is hated and despised by the majority of congress - who are forced to view it every day:-)

Excising the Manhattan Project and the Cold War from history is something I'm sure that a
certain fraction of the world would like to do. But face it, millions of Japanase civilians and probably a million US serviceman would've died if the conventional war had continued. If Nevada wants to take pride in this, it's fine by me.

And the fact that the opposition to the license plates seems to love citing the current Yucca Mountain plan is annoying to me.

Well, opposition or not, I think most people think it's just pretty damn ironic for the state to be issuing nuke plates to commemorate all the nuclear tests there but be fighting tooth and nail to keep Yucca Mountain from being finished.

Guess what folks, Yucca Mountain can't be used for much else. The Nevada test site is hot enough that you have to wear radiation badges to even visit the place, and there's no waste there yet.

In Nevada's past nuclear testing happened. It led to a Nuclear weapon that helped put an end to WWII which ultimately led to fewer lives lost on our side. That, in turn, led to a form of power generation that is, I hate to say, cleaner to the environment than fossel fuels. The waste merely needs to be dealt with responsibly.

So if Nevada wants to be proud of their history instead of ashamed of it, more power to them.

Actually, Nevada played no role in the development of the weapons that ended the war. The Test Site was established afterwards when the cost of going out to the South Pacific to blow up islands got exorbitant and someone pointed out that we had a Big Empty right here at home.

dfn5 wrote:In Nevada's past nuclear testing happened. It led to a Nuclear weapon that helped put an end to WWII

The Trinity Test [fas.org] was performed at Trinity Site, New Mexico. Nevada had nothing to do with it.

(And, incidentally, the type of bomb dropped on Hiroshima was not tested before being used since it was of the simpler Uranium 235 gun type. The Trinity Test involved the Plutonium 239 implosion type which was the same as the type dropped three days after Hiroshima on Nagasaki.)

Not that storing the material in one central area isn't a good idea - but moving it in this manner may be more dangerous than anything we've ever encountered with nuclear material - especially the responsibility is handed over to the private sector.

Sure.. Nukes are bad... But you can argue that they are the best thing that happened to us and that its the Nukes themselves that saved human race from ultimate destruction.. How?? You could argue that nukes serve as deterrent that keeps all the major world powers from going into the war.. think about it.. Without Nukes to serve as deterrent US and Russia would have probably went into a war that would have costed millions of lives.. So as bad as they are, you could argue that nukes brought STABILITY since no country is willing to risk complete destruction.. So when u look at the nukes as pacifying factor in world today then really it does not seem as bad. Few times Nukes have been used in Japan probably prevented an all out ground war between Japanese and Americans that could have resulted in far greater number of casualties then it was the case in Hiroshima and Ogasaki..

Sure, as it turns out, nukes served as an effective deterant to war and possibly prevented a significant number of deaths. However, the amount of risk associated with nukes is mind-boggling. What would the world be like had Kennedy ordered nuclear strikes during the missle crisis? Nukes were seriously considered for use during Vietnam, where they would arguably have led to a full-scale nuclear war. These are just two incidents which our government has let slip - think of how many more there have been that our government or the USSR have successfully kept under wraps.

As it turns out, nukes might arguably have been good for humanity, but at the cost of how many close calls? And of course, the possibility of nuclear war is far from over. As more countries develop nuclear weapons, there will be more and more chance of an lunatic or terrorist getting ahold of one.

One could probably make a case that gasoline-powered automobiles have had much more devastating negative effects on the world than nuclear weapons and nuclear energy put together: pollution, global warming, urban decay, and so on. If you buy that argument, then it's denigrating to nuclear testing to depict it on an auto license plate.

There really isn't a controversy surrounding Yucca Mountain - the federal government is going to take a mountain in an area that has already been nuked to death and store waste there. Sure there are protests, but in reality the government made the final decision on Yucca Mountain the moment they proposed the project.

Any dissnet at the state level is going to be overridden at the federal level. Yucca Mountain is a done deal.

For the amusement of the/. crowd, I submit an article, written last year, in which I half seriously proposed another plate for the great state of Ohio. Any Ohioans out there wishing to help me...please send me an email.___________________Every time I see a bumper sticker or a t-shirt that says, "Don't mess with Texas" I find myself snickering. It's not that I do not like Texans, on the contrary, I've met a bunch of them, and they are quite an independent lot. (A Texan I know, in protest of his local school taxes, intends to pay his property tax in person with 63,000 nickels. It's that type of ballsy bravado that does Texas, and America for that matter, proud.) Regrettably, most Texans these days are just as milquetoasty as people from any other state.

But Texans do make a good marketing campaign. The Alamo has become a fantastic tourist trap in spite of being a horrific military failure. We Ohioans have much to learn about marketing our own state.

A great example of this is our license plates. Finally, with the introduction of the new Bicentennial Plate on October 1, we can actually put a halfway nice looking license plate on our cars. However, it is still encumbered by the "Birthplace of Aviation" slogan. The problem is, another state claims to be the birthplace of aviation, and they're doing a better job marketing it. (The North Carolina plate is a more elegant salute to the Wright Brothers than our half-ass'd slogan.) Unfortunately, the slogan on the plates is state law, and will require action by the state legislature to change (and that is akin to an act of God.)

Perhaps we should go into our history books and find something of consequence to feature on a special plate--something which encapsulates Ohio, its people and its history. You wouldn't need to look far, because Lancaster's own Gen. William T. Sherman blessed Ohio history with the type of achievement over which other states regularly drool.

In November 1864, he burned Atlanta down.

In commemoration of this event, work should begin immediately on a special license plate devoted to this incident in history.

First, we must find an appropriate tagline and graphic. If we choose a graphic that's, say, a little building burning, then a good tagline may be "Sherman burning Atlanta --Nov. 1864." I guess the plate could be devoted to General Sherman himself, with a little picture of him and the tagline "Gen. Sherman--the man who burned down Atlanta."

I am however much more in love with a tagline saying, "Don't mess with Ohio or we'll burn down Atlanta...again." (Consider the new tagline a swipe not at Georgia, but at Texas--I mean, what have they ever burned down?) I think that nicely summarizes this feat in Ohio history, in addition to describing the feistiness that Ohioans should be known for. (Admittedly burning Atlanta down today would require a lot of work--its metropolitan area now extends into Tennessee and Florida.)

There is precedence for acridity on license plates. New Hampshire started it all with "Live Free or Die"--homage to our Revolutionary roots. Washington DC's new plates are emblazoned with "No Taxation without Representation"--another commemoration of America's Revolutionary history, not to mention the District's unique political situation. Even "Birthplace of Aviation" is a passive-aggressive swipe at North Carolina. Not all Ohioans may wish to have the Sherman plate; some may wish to drive south of Covington, Kentucky. But for those who do, I don't see why "Don't mess with Ohio or we'll burn down Atlanta...again" cannot be issued to the proud Ohioan interested in memorializing our state, and our nation's, history.

To the critics who say that license plates are meant only for vehicle identification purposes, my response is that special plates are doing an adequate job identifying vehicles. However, they are a medium for so much more. Pennsylvania's ex-Governor Tom Ridge said that license plates are moving billboards for a state. Ohio must learn to leverage this advertising space in its favor in order to establish a unique state identity. The new Bicentennial plate is a start.

A petition must be circulated to collect 1000 names, addresses and current plate numbers of individuals willing to buy the plate when it is introduced. Contact me if you're interested in helping get the petition started.

"The Alamo has become a fantastic tourist trap in spite of being a horrific military failure"

Err, no. The stand at the Alamo delayed the Mexian troops while the Texas army finally got it's act together. Not to mention galvanizing them as well. Also, lets not forget that the number of casualites inflited by the Alamo defenders against the vasty larger Mexican army were nothing less than amazing.

> > The Alamo has become a fantastic tourist trap in spite of being a horrific military failure"

> Err, no. The stand at the Alamo delayed the Mexian troops while the Texas army finally got it's act together.

Err, yes. The Alamo was an indefensible site with no military importance. The defenders could've delayed the Mexican army better elsewhere. Not that the Mexicans did any better; Santa Ana was so impatient that he ordered ill-prepared infantry assaults that predictably got slaughtered. All he had to do was wait for his artillery to catch up and the Texans were doomed (which is what happened in the end). The Alamo was an amazing display of military incompetence by both sides.

I am however much more in love with a tagline saying, "Don't mess with Ohio or we'll burn down Atlanta...again." (Consider the new tagline a swipe not at Georgia, but at Texas--I mean, what have they ever burned down?) I think that nicely summarizes this feat in Ohio history, in addition to describing the feistiness that Ohioans should be known for. (Admittedly burning Atlanta down today would require a lot of work--its metropolitan area now extends into Tennessee and Florida.)

So can we just mess with Ohio now and get it over with? Atlanta is overdue for another burning.. and this time it needs to be flattened, so they don't try to route the roads around the rubble again.. And while we are at it, forbid the name 'Peachtree' from being used in any public road/building/work.

I don't think it's fair to associate Albert Einstein's theory of relativity with a mushroom cloud. The theory and Einstein himself were about advancing the state of human knowledge, not destroying it. It was even Einstein himself who made the famous quote, ""I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Maybe they should sell replica plates with that on it to anyone, whether they live in Nevada or not-- like those ones from Universal Studios that read "OUTATIME" like the one on the DeLorean in Back to the Future.

Second, how can we be proud of creating a weapon that caused such destruction and left our country (and the world) on the edge of destruction for nearly 50 fucking years (and currently, moving closer to the edge than ever before).

Yes, because it would have been much better if someone other than the U.S. got the bomb first.

I'm not sure if I feel it'd be a good idea to drive around with a mushroom cloud on my license plate, but you cynical assholes piss me off sometimes. Take a step back and seriously consider why people would be proud of the Nevada Test Site instead of coming off like a fucknaut toddler for a change.

Second, how can we be proud of creating a weapon that caused such destruction and left our country (and the world) on the edge of destruction for nearly 50 fucking years (and currently, moving closer to the edge than ever before).

You know, the same weapon you claim has left our country on the edge of destruction is also responsible for keeping our country from destruction in those same 50 years. I very much like my life here in the US and whether you like it or not, nuclear weapons have played a big role in making sure I have that life to enjoy.

"It's kind of like the issue of gun control. If you know that somewhere, someone in society is going to own a gun and they cannot be trusted with it, you better damn sure have one yourself."

With the mentality like this one, no wonder the society in the US looks like it does.

The world is a violent place, it is like a society where you do have to carry a gun to be safe.

In response to the second poster, the Soviets would have still developed the bomb if we never did. They would have been much more willing to drop the bomb if they knew we couldn't strike back.

Have you ever heard of MAD (mutaully assured destruction), in which if one nuclear power strikes another nuclear power, it is assured that both countries would be destroyed. This was the main detterent during the cold war.

If we didn't have nukes, somebody would set us up the bomb.

Damn good thing we used the bomb in WW2 also. We saved many lives by dropping the bombs. While there were some moderates, the vast majority of the Japanese gov't was planning to fight to the last man. They were training women and children to kill our soldiers with homemade spears.

We would have had to invade if we didn't drop the bombs. We would have firebombed the shit out of everything in Japan to soften it up for our troops. That would have killed a couple million right there.

Then, hundreds of thousands of our troops would have been killed. Since the Japanese civilians would have been very hostile, our troops would be forced to kill millions of Japanese citizens. Also, many, many more Japanese would have commited suicide as our troops advanced, as we saw in Okinawa.

When you look at it, the bombings killed several hundred thousand people but prevented the loss of millions of lives.

Anyway, remember how fiercely we fought at Okinawa? That isn't even the Japanese homeland. Imagine how bad it would have been in mainland Japan.

I spent a year in the mountain west, and there is a very strong anti-us government undercurrent there. Last year a Utah congressman aired commercials saying that his father was a "down-winder" (local parlance for those downwind of the Nevada test sites). This was his way of making sure everybody knew he had the requisite distrust of government needed for someone in the government.

The license plate is the sort of thing that serves as a reminder for many people who in the words of one former governor "fear the government in Washington DC more than the one in Moscow." Many people see this as a symbol of the way they have been abused and is not a symbol of pride in any sense!

Maybe the anti-US government poeple who live in those areas should
consider where the land came from in the
first place. The US government appropriated
it from natives or bought it from colonial empires,
then gave it away or sold it (or still rents it) at absurdely low prices to
homesteaders, ranchers and miners.

Now people are unhappy that the government
is less than an ideal neighbor. Maybe the old sayings "caveat emptor" and "you get what you pay for"
are proved right again.

It's not the effect of the bomb that they are proud of. It's not the state of the land that they're proud of.

What they are proud of is the patriotic effort that was made, the sacrifices. It's part of keeping track of the history of that particular state. Noone wants to be history-less, even though the history might not be all about greatness and cheerfulness. Remember, history is a way to avoid making the same mistake over and over and over (ad nauseam) again.

The plate should contain what people actually associate with the bomb. Nobody
would think of a nuclear device if you created a rushing fire-storm, both flash and radiation burns, sickness, and cancer' (which would be nearly impossible to depict on a licence plate anyways).

You might not have been infiltrated by radiation, but you have been infiltrated by ignorance, which I personally think is worse.
As a side-note. I'm not from Nevada. I'm not even from the states. I don't think highly of the nuclear devices. I don't even think highly of the states (There goes my karma). But one thing I care about, is that people are allowed to express themselves freely, without ignorant idiots preaching their "truth", which is clearly superior to others'.

if we hadn't begun development and let the Russians develop it w/us in the first place, there is the small possibility that they would not have been able to complete their weapons in the short time-frame that they did. Thus creating a longer time before their development of more advanced thermo-nuclear weapons and thus our heated confrontations in the future.

It saved many Japanese lives too, you know. Everyone in Japan was prepared to do their civic duty and die with honor, whether they wanted to or not. Fat Man and Little Boy did what no other method could do - shocked Emperor Hirohito into ending the war.

But it was a big part of their past and they deserve to celebrate it if they so choose.

Gee, I hope Germany follows with plates commemorating gas chambers and crematoriums. Or what about a plate depicting people burning in the Dresden and Tokyo fire bombings? People with limbs shot off by guns or blown off by landmines? People dying of secondary nuclear effects? Maybe some black slaves whipped bloody.

I think that's the stuff we should remember, the innocent people who suffered and died horrible deaths so we could have minivans, wall to wall carpeting, and a corporate-run government to build roads for us to drive around with cartoon pictures of nuclear blasts. Kaboom!

Gee, I hope Germany follows with plates commemorating gas chambers and crematoriums. Or what about a plate depicting people burning in the Dresden and Tokyo fire bombings? People with limbs shot off by guns or blown off by landmines? People dying of secondary nuclear effects? Maybe some black slaves whipped bloody.

I think that's the stuff we should remember, the innocent people who suffered and died horrible deaths so we could have minivans, wall to wall carpeting, and a corporate-run government to build roads for us to drive around with cartoon pictures of nuclear blasts. Kaboom!

You're right! A license plate commemorating trolls would be a great idea!

Uh, it's quite logical when you think about it. Military gunnery ranges are usually off limits for civilians => less human activity there (they don't shoot _that_ much there...) => animals like it. Why not call it a wildlife range at the same time and make some tree-huggers happy.

Off course there will be incidents when animals are killed by shells, but I think they are quite rare after all. There are exceptions though. Reindeers during winter being a famous one. Now, contrary to what you might have understood from watching xmas movies, reindeers are not very smart animals. In fact, they are fucking stupid. No survival instinct whatsoever.

Now for a short introduction to artillery. Usually you fire calibration rounds to calibrate the tubes. Only when you know the rounds hit the target you shoot with all you got.

So, during winter artillery firing exercises, the calibration shells blow away the snow cover. This often leads to reindeers arriving at the scene to eat the newly exposed undervegatation. Usually just in time for the "big arty barrage" to hit them...;) IIRC, there was a case in Finland a few years back when an entire herd of like 50 reindeers were blasted in one go.